Ground Zeroes is Only Worth What You'll Pay For It

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Ground Zeroes is Only Worth What You'll Pay For It

The evolution from "Weird Kid" to "Creepy Kid" seems to be complete with Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and it's nobody's fault but your own.

Read Full Article

 

[Evonisia]

Before it runs out of new content? Well in multiplayer games that is unfair, because you're supposed to play them over and over again. Was Team Fortress 2 just half an' hour of content when it came out? Was Left4Dead just two to three hours?

Of course, if you put in something which allow players to make their own game modes then the opportunities and time increase several times over. Halo 3 is proof enough of that.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

Yet again, today The Escapist reminds me that we are all just assholes. This could be a trend!

#WeAreAllAssholes

 

[Zhukov]

Agreed on the first part.

MGS and Kojima are not the game and person to bring us an exploration of the horrors of war.

It just plain doesn't work with cloned super-soldiers, nano-vampires and mechs that jump about going "Moo".

 

[JayDee]

It seems that the only thing that truly justifies the expense of a game is the quality of the experience you're buying, a somewhat subjective concept that can't be measured by hours of play time. Portal is a good example of brevity married to wit and poise. Ground Zeroes simply feels stunted by comparison, as opposed to a brief gem polished to a mirror sheen.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Metal Gear Solid had a self contained story that almost made sense, but was thoroughly entertaining regardless. Then Metal Gear got too full of itself, and we got MGS2 when they pretended like we cared about the nonsense they were peddling.

No, we just wanted Snake. We didn't care about your stupid story.

Now it's just off the rails, with no one to challenge Kojima's creative decisions and his deeply disturbing sexist pervert tendencies because they've deluded themselves into thinking he's some kind of storytelling master.

 

[josemlopes]

Everything is wrong here, like Evonisia said multiplayer games are supposed to be played multiple times and the amount of content in them shows if they are worth it or not (some multiplayer games are released with very few maps). Ground Zeroes has a terrible map (for gameplay) where you basicly either have roads or cell blocks and every are is played exactly the same (the sidemissions are played in the same way as the main mission, they barely offer any kind of new experience that wasnt availabe in the main one).

And MGS is self-aware, not just in your face like in the Platinum games.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Before it runs out of new content? Well in multiplayer games that is unfair, because you're supposed to play them over and over again. Was Team Fortress 2 just half an' hour of content when it came out? Was Left4Dead just two to three hours?

Of course, if you put in something which allow players to make their own game modes then the opportunities and time increase several times over. Halo 3 is proof enough of that.

TF2 has mods, user made maps, and dedicated servers, increasing its amount of content 100 fold.

 

[FoolKiller]

In my opinion, the objective worth of a game should be measured in hours of content, not hours of average playtime - how many hours go past before a game has nothing new to offer and starts repeating itself, because the number of additional hours of fun that can be extracted becomes much more subjective at that point.

Don't you see the irony of your statement? You're stating that the objective worth of a game should be based on your subjective point of view instead of someone else's.

In my opinion, the worth should be based on how many hours I enjoy and continue to enjoy playing the game. I put nearly 200 hours into the first Borderlands and paid only $20 for it. I went through the side quests twice and the main story 3 times, twice alone and once with a friend.

The trouble I have with the notion of objective worth is that it has to be subjected to someone's viewpoint. I'll give the example of Splinter Cell: Blacklist because I'm more familiar with it. That game took my friend a little over 10 hours to beat (finish the main storyline) and it took me over 20. He played on normal difficulty trying to murder everyone he could find. I went through it on perfectionist difficulty and made it through stealthily without killing a soul. So how would you rate this objectively? It's the same content, experienced differently because my friend and I are two different people.

 

[PrimePowerOn]

Ground Zeroes is Only Worth What You'll Pay For It

I could go on the internet right now and download enough older games to keep me occupied for the whole 80 hours required to die of sleep deprivation (Editor's Note: There is documented evidence of someone going 264 hours without sleep.), and the combined cost would be under twenty bucks.

Ooooo, called out by the Editor! Thanks whomever that was for filling my afternoon with a wonderful area of wiki and scholarly articles about the effects of sleep deprivation. The more you know!

 

[Muspelheim]

Now, be careful, though. If your creepy, Sonic-related work offends the very Gods too much, they might torch your house.

I do remember that silly jumpsuit thing, and that the first thing that happened when that character was introduced was that I recieved a button prompt to stare at her breasts. Mr. Snake has no manners at all, does he?

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

And MGS is self-aware, not just in your face like in the Platinum games.

I dunno, MGS may have a modicum of self-awareness, but that doesn't stop it from being uncomfortably full of itself.

Sure, there is plenty of goofy stuff to point at and go, "See? MGS doesn't take itself too seriously. What serious game would have masturbation jokes?" But Kojima then expects us to become engrossed in his 40-minute cutscenes about the intricacies of the world he's built around war and death and other heavy stuff. It's just so schizophrenic.

You see, some people understand that humor can be used to break the tension in a deep, complex, emotionally depressing story. Kojima seems to have heard of the concept, but the way he executes it is just to throw in random weirdness and boobs at unexpected times. Sure, it makes us go "Wtf?! That's so nutty!" and sure does break the tension, but it also breaks the mood, the immersion, the believability, and the investment.

The only way I can even take Metal Gear seriously anymore is it goes for broke with the silliness, like with MGRising.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I dunno, MGS may have a modicum of self-awareness, but that doesn't stop it from being uncomfortably full of itself.

Sure, there is plenty of goofy stuff to point at and go, "See? MGS doesn't take itself too seriously. What serious game would have masturbation jokes?" But Kojima then expects us to become engrossed in his 40-minute cutscenes about the intricacies of the world he's built around war and death and other heavy stuff. It's just so schizophrenic.

You see, some people understand that humor can be used to break the tension in a deep, complex, emotionally depressing story. Kojima seems to have heard of the concept, but the way he executes it is just to throw in random weirdness and boobs at unexpected times. Sure, it makes us go "Wtf?! That's so nutty!" and sure does break the tension, but it also breaks the mood, the immersion, the believability, and the investment.

The only way I can even take Metal Gear seriously anymore is it goes for broke with the silliness, like with MGRising.

Very well put. I played MGS4 mostly to see why the series was a staple of gaming, and I was shocked at the whiplash and general shoddiness of the story. Having a FOTXTROT agent whose whole gag is having his pants drop/poop himself (I can't remember which) is fine, as is exploring the idea of taking young women from conflict zones, brainwashing them and turning them into soldiers. Having to go from one to another in the same game is too much, even if you add hour-long dialogues to break them up. It was like if two different teams were given an outline of the story at the beginning of production, then kept apart so that each could develop in isolation before Kojima spliced them together by taking random elements from one or the other at any given time.

OT: I'm still not sure that 'objective length' is a fair measurement of the value of a game, as much as it's ability to give a complete and satisfying experience within a reasonable length of time. "Non-repeating content" is a good start, but even simple combination of a handful of multiplayer modes and maps can give an incredible amount of options, further augmented by the fact that no match can or does play out the same way as another, and that's something that is core to the design of these games (for instance, most board games like chess or Monopoly have a similar set-up or relying on player action to introduce variety).

JayDee mentioned Portal, which is a good example of something with a very limited amount of objective content (once you play through once, you're in a "repeating content" state for 90% of every playthrough thereafter) that was nevertheless satisfying and well worth the cost. Ground Zeroes, meanwhile, felt abbreviated because there was no buildup or payoff, your character doesn't change meaningfully through play (only a few choices about style and equipment), and everything quickly becomes repeated content.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Titanfall's "campaign" can be completed in one hour? Uh, the game shipped with 16 maps according to one poster in its thread, and seven of them are part of the standard story campaign according to the official wiki [http://titanfall.gamepedia.com/Campaign_Missions]. If you can get through all of those in an hour, those must be some damned fast rounds. What, is it like playing each of seven Counter-Strike maps exactly once, as only one side?

 

[deathmothon]

What about rogue-likes? Hell, what about fine art? You're article was bad and the accountant at the end was right. The only objective worth you can put on something is what people will pay.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Very well put. I played MGS4 mostly to see why the series was a staple of gaming, and I was shocked at the whiplash and general shoddiness of the story. Having a FOTXTROT agent whose whole gag is having his pants drop/poop himself (I can't remember which) is fine, as is exploring the idea of taking young women from conflict zones, brainwashing them and turning them into soldiers.

Well, that's probably why you missed what makes Metal Gear a staple of gaming. Johnny (and his grandfather)'s intestinal distress are plot points. For Johnny, it foreshadows the reveal that he's immune to Screaming Mantis' manipulation because he doesn't have nanomachines to regulate his bodily functions like the rest of his squad. For his grandfather, one of the ways to escape the prison cell is to wait until Sasaki runs off to the bathroom to open the cell door and slip away.

The 'humor' tends to serve a purpose greater than just lightening the mood. If you're into Eastern media, often serious series have lighthearted moments to break up the tension. Western media tends to keep serious stories serious all the time, which burns people out and breeds apathy towards the characters and the story as a whole.

 

[SKBPinkie]

The reason why I'll never play an MGS game -

No matter how many times people discuss MGS, no one ever, ever talks about the gameplay. In my opinion, this is almost certainly a game not worth playing.

Same thing happened with Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, Gone Home, etc. I played them, got bored out of my mind, and it's only recently that I recognize certain patterns regarding how people discuss these titles.

 

[Mahoshonen]

I join Yahtzee in his hate of the gaming public.